


i won't wake up unless you ask if i am ok

by Anonymous



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amnesia, F/F, Mild Blood, Romance, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29871369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: She wakes up cold, surrounded by steady, mechanical beeping and fluorescent lights. Her world is blurry, as if her eyes were accustomed to seeing. Unaccustomed to doing their job. Her out of focus eyes begin to dial in on the nearest thing in the room: a woman with long, light brown hair and pale pink scrubs. A nurse.She doesn’t know where she is, but she does know she shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t be here. Her eyes dart to her left arm, to the IV. But they catch on something else. A barcode etched into her arm in ink. Something about it is familiar, but not comforting. It turns her stomach as she reads the numbers in her mind, like it was etched into her mind with ink as well: 0883929444793. The numbers rattle around in her brain, searching for somewhere to latch on, for some memory to link the familiarity. But it finds nothing.
Relationships: Echo/Harper McIntyre
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: TROPED: Madness 2.0





	i won't wake up unless you ask if i am ok

She wakes up cold, surrounded by steady, mechanical beeping and fluorescent lights. Her world is blurry, as if her eyes were accustomed to seeing. Unaccustomed to doing their job. Her out of focus eyes begin to dial in on the nearest thing in the room: a woman with long, light brown hair and pale pink scrubs. A nurse.  
She doesn’t know where she is, but she does know she shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t be here. Her eyes dart to her left arm, to the IV. But they catch on something else. A barcode etched into her arm in ink. Something about it is familiar, but not comforting. It turns her stomach as she reads the numbers in her mind, like it was etched into her mind with ink as well: 0883929444793. The numbers rattle around in her brain, searching for somewhere to latch on, for some memory to link the familiarity. But it finds nothing.  
She is drawn out of the searching by the clattering of a clipboard, striking the floor in a harsh percussion.  
“Oh my god, you’re awake!”  
The nurse is turned now, speaking to her. Staring at her in a mix of surprise and joy. But she can only look back in indifference.  
She watches as the nurse shouts out into the hallway.  
“Clarke, page Dr. Griffin. Echo is awake!”  
Echo. The word means nothing to her.  
The nurse rushes back over to her, grabbing her hand gently. Her eyes fill with tears as her hair falls around her face. She is pretty.  
“It’s okay, Echo,” the nurse whispers softly around her tears, squeezing her hand slightly. “You’re gonna be okay.”  
Echo. The word is her name. But it still means nothing.

Dr. Griffin spoke to her at length, but the words didn’t mean much to Echo. Something about an accident, a concussion, amnesia. Echo was much more interested in what the nurse had to say.  
The nurse was Harper, and she was the only warmth in the hospital. She explained things much better.  
Echo was found in the street near the Azgedan Embassy, bleeding from the head. Something had happened to her, and a passerby had taken her to the Jaha Memorial Hospital in Arkadia. Echo had no papers, no identification, just a series of numbers on her arm.  
The nurse, Harper, had given her a name: Echo. Apparently, she had the habit of repeating the words Harper told her while unconscious. Echo thought the name was funny, and it made Harper smile. So she would keep it.  
But Harper wasn’t smiling right now. Her brow was furrowed worriedly, concerned for Echo’s wellbeing. It was cute.  
“Is anything coming back to you?”  
Echo wracked her brain.  
“I’m sorry, Harper. I can’t remember anything before I woke up.”  
Harper’s brow furrowed deeper, and the sight made Echo smile.  
Echo reached out and held Harper’s hand. The nurse looked surprised, but didn’t pull away.  
“I’m sure I’ll remember something,” she said, squeezing Harper’s hand gently. “You just have to keep helping me.”  
Harper smiled. It was like the sun. Warm and bright.

“What do you think you did?”  
Echo looked out into the dark room, searching for Harper’s outline. She was sitting beside the bed, her face illuminated ever so slightly by the dim green neon of the digital clock on the wall. 3:43 A.M.  
“I don’t know,” Echo responded truthfully.  
It had been a month since she had woken up. A month of questions with no answers. A month of frustrated doctors and beeping machinery.  
But it was also a month of Harper. A month of stolen glances and gentle touches. A month of whispers in the dark hospital room. A month of seeing that smile.  
“Maybe you were like, a spy or something?”  
Echo could hear the smirk on Harper’s lips as she spoke. She couldn’t help but smile as well.  
“Sure. Me, 5’9”, getting into knife fights and dodging gunfire.”  
Harper laughed. It sounded like music.  
“Maybe you were a femme fatale, ya know? Traveling the globe, seducing men, stealing secrets?”  
“Doesn’t sound like that great of a gig to me.”  
They settled back into silence, smiles on their lips. Happy.  
Suddenly, the room was awash in artificial yellow light as the door swung open, slamming into the wall. Shadows filled the doorframe. But something even stranger happened. Echo knew what to do.  
She rolled over the bed and pushed Harper to the ground right as the silenced shots rang out. Harper screamed as the two of them hit the ground hard. Echo flipped her body over and put her feet up against the hospital bed. She kicked as hard as she could, sending the hospital bed surging towards the door, hitting one of the men, his weapon flying somewhere into the darkness. The bed forced the shadows back and blocked the entrance. She heard the footsteps as they backed up. Sounded like three men. Her brain began running through special ops tactics automatically. Small team, a synchronized breach, silenced pistols.  
“Azgedan special ops.”  
Her own voice surprised Echo. It didn’t sound like her.  
Harper’s voice was filled with panicked tears as she strained to keep quiet.  
“What’s going on? What are you talking about?”  
Echo didn’t know what was going on, at least not consciously. But something deep inside her had awoken, and it was taking over the situation.  
She grabbed Harper’s face and looked into her eyes.  
“They’re here for me. Get to the bathroom and lock the door.”  
Harper’s eyes were filled with panic.  
“Trust me.”  
Harper nodded and ran for the bathroom. Echo turned to the door and readied herself. She knew what to do.  
She grabbed the metal food tray from the floor and ran for the door, vaulting over the bed blocking the door, slamming shoulder first into the first man. The force of the impact knocked the wind from her lungs, but it made him drop his gun. She snatched it from the floor and sent a shot directly into the foot of the second man before following up with a hit to his face with the tray. She swung around to the third man, flinging the tray at him, catching him in the jaw. As he stumbled back, Echo rushed towards him and swept his legs out from under him, sending in to the floor. She figured the first man was most likely regaining his footing by now and turned towards him, only to be met with the suppressor of his pistol.  
“Gun down,” He demanded. “Now.”  
Echo slowly set the gun down, never letting her gaze leave his eyes.  
“I’d ask to see your identifier tattoo, but something tells me I have the right girl.”  
Her eyes flashed to the barcode on her wrist, but the memory was still missing. It still didn’t mean anything.  
“Roan would pay a lot to have you returned to him. You left quite a lot of his men dead on your last mission.”  
She wracked her brain again, but still nothing came back. They were simply words.  
“He said ‘alive is preferred, but dead is acceptable.’ And you’d be a lot less trouble dead.”  
A gunshot went off.  
The man grabbed his hand as he yelled in pain, dropping the gun to the floor as red spilled from his hand. Echo’s eyes went to the door, went to Harper, hands shaking, tears staining her cheeks, eyes aflame with anger. Gun in hand.  
“Leave her alone!”  
Echo grabbed the gun from the floor and pointed it at the man.  
“Whoever you are, whoever hired you, whoever I am, I’m done.”  
He stared at her, still gripping his hand.  
“I don’t remember anything, and I don’t want to. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not doing whatever I did anymore. I suggest that if you want to keep it that way, you tell your boss and everyone else you meet that, whoever I am, to leave that person alone. Now get out of here and never find me again. I won’t give you this chance again.”  
He stared at her with his cold, calculating eyes and Echo couldn’t help but wonder if her eyes looked like that right now. But he stood up slowly, grabbed his men, and left in a hurry.  
When he finally turned the corner, Echo’s entire body slumped. It was like whatever possessed her had left. She ran towards Harper and embraced her, feeling Harper’s body give in to the pressure and stress as she burst into tears.  
“Shhhhhh, it’s okay,” Echo whispered as she held her. “They’re gone. I’m okay. Everything is okay.”  
The two of them were still there, huddled together, when hospital security arrived.

“Are you sure you don’t want to find out who you really are?”  
Harper looked at her with the same softness she always did, and Echo couldn’t help but notice the way her hair fell around her face. Echo reached forward and grabbed her hand.  
“I don’t have to know who I was. I know who I am now. I’m Echo. and I’m yours.”  
Echo leaned in and kissed her gently, moving her hands from Harper’s hands to her face, cupping it gently. She had dreamed of this moment, and she wanted it to be perfect. It was.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Troped Madness 2021!  
> The prompts this time were:  
> Character: Echo  
> Theme: Romance  
> Trope 1: Amnesia AU  
> Trope 2: Tattoos
> 
> Title taken from "How Do You Know It's Not Armadillo Shells?" by Hot Mulligan  
> Harper/Echo is really starting to become one of my favorite pairings, and I hope I did it justice here!  
> As a special treat for particularly inquisitive readers, the UPC is for a real life item that relates to Echo!


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